The Mark who wrote the Gospel by that name is a mystery. Some ancient sources identify Mark the evangelist with the John Mark who was a cousin of Barnabas. Other sources say these were two different people. The Mark who wrote the Gospel was probably a Jewish Christian writing for Gentiles. His Greek isn’t very polished. He doesn’t have a good grasp of the geography of Palestine, so it is likely he lived somewhere else.

Mark seems to have been the first to collect a bunch of stories about Jesus into written form and to use them as if a long introduction to the story of the death of Jesus. I usually tell people who are new to the story of Jesus to start with Mark. You can read through the entire Gospel in a couple of hours or so. It’s about like watching a movie like “King of Kings.” In fact, there’s theory that Mark intended people to hear his Gospel read in a single sitting something like a performance.

Some day try to read the whole Gospel in one sitting pretending you had only heard a little bit about Jesus and were curious to find out more. I suggest people suspend their knowledge of Jesus just for a while so they don’t get disappointed that there’s no birth stories or no appearances of Jesus after the resurrection. Ask yourself, who was Jesus? What did he teach? What did he do? How did people react to him? What do I think of Jesus? It’s an interesting spiritual exercise.

Read Mark (the whole book) and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne